


Clearcutting

by Lies_Unfurl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gore, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Knives, M/M, Mutilation, Season/Series 11, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26199127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lies_Unfurl/pseuds/Lies_Unfurl
Summary: Castiel says the grace he stole from the other angels is poisoning him. Castiel says he needs Dean's help getting rid of it.Dean agrees.That's his first mistake.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Clearcutting

Cas hadn’t called in advance to say he’d be coming home, so it’s a surprise – a good one – when Dean sees him step through the door.

“Hey! Didn’t know you were stopping by,” he calls from the bottom of the stairs.

Cas smooths his hands down his coat as he descends. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to inform you.”

“What? Dude, it’s not a problem. Mi casa is your casa. How’ve you been?”

“Unproductive.” Cas leans against the banister once he reaches the floor. Up close, Dean can see lines that have no place being under his eyes. He isn’t human; he shouldn’t have to deal with shit like that. “Where’s Sam?”

“Up at Jody’s. She knows a guy who knows a guy who thinks he might have a lead on a Hand of God, but he’s super paranoid. Said he’d only meet with Sam, and only at Jody’s place. Guess he got wind that I was the one that set the Darkness free.” Dean shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Not really. Not like he expects gratitude for all the other times he saved the universe. Not like the guy is wrong.

Cas frowns. “That’s factually inaccurate. Sam, Rowena, and I were all more responsible than you.”

Dean shrugs again. “Yeah, well, I took it away from Cain in the first place, so. Not much to argue about.”

Cas doesn’t look like he agrees, but he doesn’t push the matter. Just glances around, not meeting Dean’s eyes. Which is the first sign, or at least the first sign that Dean really picks up on, that something’s wrong.

“What’s up?” Dean asks. 

Cas doesn’t answer. Which is. Not good. Because he kind of needs Cas to be okay right now, because god knows that he sure isn’t.

Dean turns. “C’mon. Let’s grab a beer.”

He’s several steps toward the kitchen already when Cas calls, “Wait.”

Dean pauses. He flexes his fist, heart already starting to speed up. “Yeah?”

“I—I was hoping Sam would be gone. I have a favor to ask of you. It would be best performed sober.”

He schools his expression into one of nonchalance as Castiel approaches. “Sure. What d’you need?”

Cas just kind of _sighs_ , not meeting his eyes. “It would, perhaps, be better to show you. Your bedroom would be ideal. It's longer than mine, more room to spread out.”

“Oo-kay.” That’s not weird. That’s not waking up something he hasn’t ever let himself feel. Nope.

The walk to the bedroom takes place in silence. Dean feels like he should be saying something; it's been long enough since he last saw Cas that he should have plenty to catch him up on, but no words are coming. Everything feels so off that he can't pinpoint exactly what's wrong. 

And things don;t get any clearer once they're in his bedroom.

“Let me make it clear that I’m _asking_ this of you.” Cas begins to unknot his tie, which… what? “You have every right to say no. I can find someone else who can help.” The tie falls to the ground, followed by the coat. Somewhere between the two, Cas has laid his angel blade on the bed. And then his long, nimble fingers are unbuttoning his shirt. “Worst case scenario, I’ll do it myself. Just… please understand. When, if you start, there’s no going back.”

Dean swallows, wondering how in a matter of minutes he went from greeting his best friend to whatever this is. He can’t think. Or he doesn’t want to. Same dif. “You’re making me nervous here, Cas,” he cracks, trying to sound lighthearted. Instead, he just sounds… well. Nervous.

Cas looks at him that sad way he does, when it’s like the weight of the world is bearing down particularly heavily upon their shoulders. His shirt hangs open, but Dean can’t even bring himself to admire the hard planes of his chest. Not when he’s wearing that expression.

He doesn’t say anything, though. Just shrugs his shirt off, letting it fall into the growing pile of discarded clothing. For a moment, they just face each other.

Cas sighs, long and slow, and turns around.

Dean has read that expression before, about people’s legs turning to jelly, and he always thought it was kind of dumb. His world has been shaken, shattered even; he’s been torn to pieces emotionally and physically and he knows on a literal and figurative level what it feels like to get your heart torn out, but… jelly?

He gets it now.

Dean grips the bed frame, not trusting his suddenly unsolid legs to support him. “Holy fuck, Cas,” he whispers.

Before he even thinks about it, his hand is on Cas’s back. One finger runs lightly along…

He doesn’t know what he’s touching. All he can think about are the leviathan, but even that isn’t quite right. These… welts? on Castiel’s back aren’t thin or vein-like, though they’re the same shade, like there’s black sludge underneath his skin. But these are thick vines creeping out from his shoulder blades and down either side of his spine, the skin that borders them an angry, inflamed red. Like tree roots, Dean thinks as he traces the curvature of one mark. Like something poisonous is preparing to sprout from Castiel’s body.

Cas flinches when Dean presses down, so he immediately drops his hand. It was enough to let him feel him the marks weren’t hard, like they looked. He couldn’t tell what it was beneath the skin, but it could be pus. Or just blood.

“Sorry,” he says. “Shit. Sorry. Cas, what is this? What do you need from me?”

Castiel turns back to face him, leaning against the edge of the bed. He doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes. 

“You know that last year, I… acquired some grace from other angels. Before I had mine back.” He waits for Dean’s nod, and then continues. “There are… reasons that angels don’t just go around stealing each other’s grace. The taboo, of course, but there are also physical risks. Running on someone else’s power, at best, it’s exhausting. At worst, excruciating.”

He raises his hand before Dean can even begin to formulate a speakable thought, let alone an apology for how blind he was. “I chose not to tell you. It was bad, yes. But it was manageable.

“I didn’t know what would happen when I got my own grace back. I expected that there would be consequences, but I thought that since it was so depleted already, it wouldn’t make a difference. But my own grace, combining with the trace amounts of the foreign grace I took from the other angels… it’s toxic. I’ve still got my grace; this won’t make me fall. But I waited too long. The poison from that other grace has spread. There’s only one way to get out the rest, to… purify myself.”

He takes a deep breath, picks up his blade, and hands it to Dean. Dean stares down at it, dumbly. “I need you to cut off my wings.”

Cas isn’t joking.

Dean knows that Cas doesn’t joke in general, but he has his moments. This isn’t one of them. The look in his eyes, it’s filled with pain, but it’s also set. Resolved.

The blade feels heavy in his hand, though whether that’s because of the moment or because of some inherent difference in Castiel’s weapon, he doesn’t know. He stares at it. “Cas…”

“As I said. I’m _asking_. I… I trust you. But I understand if you’re uncomfortable.”

He turns the blade over and over. Uncomfortable doesn’t begin to cover it, not really. Lightheaded. Sick. Horrified.

Cas doesn’t ask for a lot, really. He never has.

He looks back up. “Can I see them? Your wings?”

Cas dips his head. “As you wish.”

Dean still remembers the way he felt when Castiel had unfolded his wings for the first time, in that barn all those years ago. Even through the heart-stopping fear, his chest had filled with awe at the way that the air crackled around his skin, at how the shadows had unfurled against the sigil-covered wall.

He doesn’t know what’s filling his chest now. Revulsion? Pity? Probably both, and also a vast amount of self-loathing, because he knows it’s his fault. He’s the reason Castiel went to Metatron, the reason that Castiel looks like this.

They remind him of trees left after a forest fire, their burnt and barren branches extending hopelessly out into the sky. Blackened muscle barely clings to charred bones. The remaining feathers hang limp and scraggly. He can smell ash.

Dean touches the joint where the left wing fans out, and as soon as his hands have made contact, burnt feathers crumble off beneath him. Castiel flinches.

“Sorry,” he says again, as if that one word is capable of encapsulating everything he regrets.

Cas nods, flexing his wings. The motion causes more charred flakes to fall to the ground, and the black lines in his back seem to pulse with the movement. 

“Tell me there’s a way to cure this,” Dean says, swallowing hard. “There’s—there’s gotta be. There are so many books here; something’s gotta have an answer. We just need to look—”

“Dean.” That stupid soft, sad look in Castiel’s eyes. As if he’s trying to comfort Dean. Like it’s Dean’s feelings that matter here. “Even if there is, we don’t have time.”

“Fuck.” Dean turns from Castiel, closing his eyes tight. “How long? How long have you know this was happening?”

“It’s not import—”

“Goddammit Cas, of course it’s important! How long have you been ignoring the fact that you’re fucking _dying_ because you’ve been too busy trying to fix everything I screwed up?”

“You screwed up nothing.” His wings flash up in an apparently automatic defense mechanism, leaving a sooty cloud in their wake that Dean barely registers, because the involuntary movement has sent Cas gasping and stumbling, and suddenly his bare chest is flush with Dean’s and his arms are gripping Dean’s shoulders for support.

Dean reaches out automatically to grab onto Cas’s bicep, helping to steady him. His other hand rests, without thinking, on the back of Cas’s head, his thumb stroking the small hairs there. 

He knows he shouldn’t be so forward, so tactile with Castiel because every touch just makes him want more, but he can’t help himself. Maybe it’s because he grew up holding and comforting Sam whenever he was hurt. Probably it’s something else.

Dean presses Cas’s head against his shoulder, silently begging him to just rest for a minute, give Dean time to think. Cas’s arms tighten around him.

Dean stares at the skeletal wings as they stand like that. When Cas was human and on the streets by himself, did they hurt? Have they been rotting slowly all these years, right in front of him as he was too preoccupied with Gadreel and the Mark of Cain and all his other fuckups to notice?

Suddenly he’s four years old and clinging to his dad’s hand two, maybe three days after the fire, when they’d gone back to see if there was anything left to salvage. Dad had wanted to leave him and Sammy with a babysitter but Dean had clung to him, refusing to be separated until he relented and brought them along. He hasn’t thought about that days in years, managed to bury it down as he accumulated countless other traumas, but right now—

Right now Castiel’s wings remind him of the remnants of his childhood home. Support beams that still stretched in the room that had once been a kitchen, burnt and blackened but somehow recognizable. The couch he once watched cartoons on, the fabric gray and curling up to reveal the foam underneath. Ash everywhere. As soon as he’d gotten there he had wanted to leave, but he didn’t ask Dad, just clung tightly to Sam’s stroller and made himself look, bear witness to the destruction of his childhood.

That’s what Cas’s wings are now. The complete breakdown of what should have been indestructible; a constant gone up in flames. Seven years ago, when Dean had seen the shadows of the wings, he had never imagined that they could be ruined so completely. But here they are now, burnt husks slowly poisoning Cas, threatening to take away the presence that he’s become so accustomed to, he doesn’t know what he’d do without it.

“If you want me to stop, you gotta tell me. No matter where we are. I’ll have the first-aid kit with me. I’ll… I’ll reattach them if you change your mind…”

He’s been stitching up bodies and setting bones since his dad taught him at six years old, but something tells him this isn’t something ordinary sutures or casts could fix. He’s lying. He’s sure Cas knows it, too, but he has to say it. Needs Cas to know where the exits are if he decides to leave the horror show that’s about to happen.

Castiel nods, though Dean can see in his eyes that he knows Dean is making an impossible promise. “Thank you.”

He picks his sword up off the bed, where Dean must’ve dropped it when faced with the sight of his wings, and holds it out to Dean. The bunker’s fluorescent lights glint off the silver in flashes that look a little like an angel’s grace, when it’s burning out through the eyes of their vessel.

“You should use my sword. I forged it myself, with my own grace. That should help it draw out the foreign substance.”

Dean nods, taking the blade. “How… how exactly am I gonna do this?”

“Very carefully, I hope,” Castiel deadpans. He sighs at the Look that Dean gives him. “You cut, Dean. At the base of the wings. You’ll have to dig deep to make sure you’re getting to all of the rot. When you see my grace, you’ll know you’ve gone deep enough.”

“Your grace? Are you sure that’s safe?” Because it sure as hell does _not_ sound safe.

“It’s necessary. And it won’t kill me. The poison, left alone, though…”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Dean swallows and nods, staring at the sword, and Cas knows him well enough to understand that he’s well and truly on board with this fucked-up plan.

Cas nods back. “Where do you want me?” 

He has to choke a peal of hysteric laughter. How long has he fantasized about those words said in that gravelly voice? And how fucked up is it that his answer is the same even in this messy, uncomfortable, godawful and god-forsaken context?

“The bed. It’ll be more comfortable for you than bending over a table or something.”

He’s pretty sure his cheeks heat up at that, the worst response that he possibly could have uttered, and one that leaves absolutely no doubt as to where his mind currently is. But Castiel, being Castiel, doesn’t seem to notice.

“I was hoping you’d say that. I do like your mattress, though I fear that the… debris of my wings might ruin your sheets.”

Yep. He’s on fire. He knows, of course, that Cas is just referring to all the times that they sat together watching movies, Cas absorbed in the action playing out on Sam’s laptop, Dean preoccupied with the reality of having Cas in his bed. His dick kinda needs to be reminded, though. However much this situation is fucked-up and inherently unsexy and he probably shouldn’t even be remembering that he _has_ a dick, let alone one that perks up at the most inappropriate moments.

“Yeah. Well. You can lie down. Uh, put the pillows under your chest so your shoulders are kinda upwards. And don’t worry about the sheets; I gotta change them anyway.”

He stares at the rippling muscles of Castiel’s back, easily visible between the sparse feathers drooping down from Cas’s wings. The black lines of poison somehow only accentuate the beauty beneath them. It’s beyond fucked up that he’s thinking this way—but, in his defense, this is probably the longest Cas has ever been shirtless in front of him. A guy’s allowed to let him mind wander before he permanently mutilates his best friend, right?

Right.

His fingers clench and unclench around the blade. Cas has done as he asked, lying on his bed with his chest propped up with Dean’s pillows. His wings almost touch the walls on either side of his bedroom. 

Nothing to lose now.

Taking a deep breath, he kneels on his mattress. This whole situation is already more intimate than it had any right to be, so, throwing decorum to the wind, he crawls forward until he’s straddling one of Cas’s legs, carefully positioning himself so that certain parts of him aren’t pressed against Castiel.

God. Why is he thinking so much about his dick now, of all moments? 

(Probably because what he’s about to do is even more fucked up than admitting his maybe-crush on his decidedly male-vesseled best friend. The reemergence of his latent bisexuality frightens him, but he’d take an identity crisis every day if it meant not having to hurt Cas. His dick _has_ always been a good distraction from everything he wants to avoid.)

He presses the tip of the sword into the base of Castiel’s wing, just enough to split the skin. Blood and something black and vile wells up under the silver blade.

He can’t do this. It’s too much.

Dean closes his eyes for a second, breathing deeply. He rests his free hand in the center of Castiel’s back, on the dip of his spine. The skin he’s touching is dry and hot, too hot. For a moment he remembers a childhood illness: a fever when he couldn’t have been more than six or seven and whoever Dad had left them with wasn’t watching too closely, didn’t notice until he was dehydrated, unable to sweat out the heat that wracked his body.

“Dean,” Cas says quietly.

“I know. Just gimme a sec.”

He opens his eyes again and, not really thinking about it, runs his fingers over one of the blackened wing bones. There’s a bump, in the center, not at the joint, where it seems like the wing was broken once. Must’ve been a hell of a wound for it to have left a mark like that, Dean thinks.

“I got it in Hell,” Cas says quietly. “Rescuing you. I was almost out and I was foolish enough to think that no demon would attack me with so many other angels around. It took me off guard.”

Of course it’s his fault. He’s not even surprised.

“I had to heal it quickly so I wouldn’t fall. Hence the blemish.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I haven’t thought about it in years. It wasn’t exactly the worst damage ever done to them.”

The dry feathers rustle with the wryness in Cas’s voice, and for a moment Dean can picture what the wings must have been like in all their glory, reacting to Castiel’s every mood and thought. How they would have flared out wide and intimidating in the face of a threat, or how his feathers would’ve bristled when Dean annoyed him enough to earn a bitchface. 

Before he can get too lost in the maze of everything he regrets, Cas gasps and arches beneath him. Dean’s eyes snap down just in time to see one of the veins of poison _ripple_ , like something alive just slithered through its surface. It throbs against Cas’s skin like it’s about to burst.

“Dean,” Cas gasps, his voice tight. “You have to _now_ or—”

“Okay. I know. I’m sorry.” For the break in Cas’s wing, for dragging him down to this sorry state, for everything he’s about to do.

He pushes the blade deep into the spot where Cas’s skin connects with his left wing. The broken sound that Cas makes as he digs downward is almost enough to make him stop, but Cas can predict him all too well; he grits out, “Keep going,” and Dean knows he’s got to finish what he’s started.

Blood and rot pour out from the gash. Not the first time Dean’s nose has been assaulted by those particular odors, but no matter how used he is to handling fresh corpses, this is worse. Of course it is. This is _Cas_.

He breathes through his mouth and wills himself not to gag. Or throw up, like he kinda wants to (he doesn’t think he’s thrown up at the sight of a body since he was 13 and he and Dad found a particularly gruesome Wendigo nest; Dad hadn’t even said anything about the moment of weakness, but the shame he felt anyway forced him into developing a steel stomach). But Cas doesn’t deserve to see his reaction; Cas needs him to be strong, so he will be.

He twists the blade slightly to the left, towards where the wing should be, and in response something like a low electric current flows up the metal. His fingers tingle like they’re dipped in sparkling water.

For a brief second he remembers killing Zachariah, first among all the other angels he’s ever stabbed. Thinking back on it, he remembers feeling something similar but stronger, like a flare lighting up in his hand as he died. He never really bothered thinking about the sensation, though; any situation that required killing an angel generally didn’t allow for that sort of reflection.

Still, his mind makes the connection now, and so it’s no surprise to him when, in the slit he’s carved in Castiel’s back, he can see grace softly pulsing up from beneath the gore.

Cas makes a choked-off sound and Dean pauses to rest his free hand on his shoulder, his blade still embedded in Cas’s flesh. “Talk to me.”

“Keep going,” Castiel orders. “It won’t feel any better if it’s slow.”

“Yeah. Uh. Do I just… cut?” It sounds dumb, but he can’t risk fucking this up. Not when he could hurt Cas in the process.

“Yes. Use the blade to dig under where the wing connects. You’ll perceive my human form as you do so, but the wings are part of my true form, and that’s where the blade is acting. You’ll know when you’re in the right place.”

Dean almost jumps when he feels Cas’s hand patting his knee, the angle, and the fact that Cas can’t see what he’s doing, making the gesture kind of awkward. “It’s for the best, Dean,” Cas reminds him. “I wouldn’t be here if there was another way.”

And isn’t it just so fucked up that he’s out here mutilating his best friend’s body, and yet Cas is the one comforting him. Isn’t that just his life.

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. He desperately wants to shut his eyes, but something tells him that he can’t really afford to do that just now.

He buries the blade to the left, to where the wing should be connecting. All at once the feeling of being connected to a live current comes back, and at first he’s jolted, almost lets go of the blade, but then it feels like the grace is connecting him to the sword, like his hand has become so powerfully magnetic that he couldn’t pull away if he tried.

And he doesn’t try. Because Cas is right, and he knows this is the right place. He has to squint to even get an idea of what he’s doing, Cas’s form is so awash in silver light. The blade presses up against something hard and unyielding, that makes his hand almost feel like it’s burning. This, he knows, is the wing, the sword acting as a conduit between Cas’s true angelic self and Dean, in all his human weakness. In another scenario, the energy rushing through him might be awesome in the original sense of the word; as it his, he can’t really appreciate the glory of practically touching an angel’s true form when his whole purpose is that he’s about to mutilate it beyond repair.

The wing won’t break no matter how much pressure he puts on it. There’s gore running in long streaks down Cas’s back. Every moment he wastes is another second of agony for Cas, another prolonging of his pain at Dean’s hands.

He twists his wrist back and forth, trying blindly for a sawing motion, and this seems to do the trick: with a sound like a bone cracking against a rocky surface, something shatters underneath Castiel’s skin. Castiel screams. His grace flares bright enough that Dean loses his grasp on the sword in a desperate attempt to shield his vision. The solid wall of heat makes him flinch back; he can’t help it, and then he’s falling off the bed.

“Fuck!” 

His eyelids throb yellow with the aftershocks of whatever just happened and he wants to keep them squeezed shut until the burning stops, but above him, Cas is gasping, panting, small pained noises that sound almost like sobs falling from his lips, and Dean can’t, won’t, prolong this anymore than he has to.

He stumbles to his feet, blinking. As the hazy room solidifies into a solid picture before him, he can see charred feathers lying on the floor. The bones of the wing dissolved into dust, apparently.

Dean forces himself to look at Cas, who’s still lying face-down, clenching the comforter, also now covered in a ashy dust, with both of his tight fists. The muscles of his back are clenched so tight it looks painful. 

Or maybe not, Dean thinks. Because whatever ache comes from the tension, it has to be minimal compared to the raw, oozing wound on his back. Blood and that black gore spill out of a cut that looks far longer than the area that he actually pierced with the blade, as though the wing was a sapling with a sprawling root system, violently pulled from the soil and tossed aside.

“Cas, you gotta let me treat that,” he says, swallowing down his urge to be sick. “Let me just get the first-aid kit and clean it, at least—”

 _“No,”_ Cas snarls, lifting his head just enough for the word to come through. “There’s no _time,_ Dean. You have to do it now, or else—”

He shudders, his remaining wing pulling in close to his shoulders for a second. The dark poison that leaks from the opposite wound is pulsing around its base, just under the surface, like it could burst out of his skin at any moment. Again, Dean is reminded of the leviathans and how their possession had rotted Castiel from the inside. 

“Okay. Fine. Okay.” He picks Castiel’s sword up, having dropped it in the aftershock of the severing, and forces himself back onto his bed to kneel above Castiel once more. The absurd thought intrudes that for all the many times he’s thought about getting Cas in bed, he never pictured this scenario.

He lets his left hand rest for a moment on Castiel’s miserably strained shoulders. A shoulder rub probably isn’t going to mean anything (even though Dean’s pretty damn good at those, if he does say so himself), but he can’t stomach the idea of letting this moment pass by without offering any sort of attempt at comfort. 

“Try to relax,” he says. “This is gonna hurt as it is. Don’t make it worse.”

Cas doesn’t answer, but he thinks he feels some softening in the tension beneath his hand. He sighs, kneads his fingers down into the quivering muscles once more, as if such a tiny gesture could mean anything in the face of the magnitude of the pain he’s about to cause, and then pierces Castiel’s skin.

Again the sensation of sticking his finger into an electrical sensation jolts its way up his arm. It hurts less this time, though, or maybe he’s just too preoccupied with the way Cas arches off the bed, almost dislodging Dean from where he’s straddling his legs, and practically _howls_ , an awful, animalistic sound that Dean hasn’t heard since Cas pulled him away from all the tormented souls in Hell.

“Fuck!” One hand holding the sword into the wound that’s steadily leaking silver light, he presses the other hand hard into the small of Castiel’s back, trying at once to comfort him and to hold him still. “Cas! Cas, what—”

How he intended to finish the sentence, he’s not really sure. It doesn’t exactly matter, as Cas cuts him off. “Do it. Now, Dean!”

He couldn’t argue with Cas even if he was capable of forming coherent sentences right now. Once more, he forces the blade into Cas’s back, deeper than it seems like it should go. Rot oozes out below, looking almost purple in the glow of the grace that spills out alongside it. He twists until the sword meets something hard, that he knows from years of anatomy lessons with Alistair has no place in a human back. 

The electric sensation becomes almost unbearable, but there’s no turning back now. He lifts the blade out just enough to angle the tip of it against the wing’s base, and then shoves down hard while twisting his wrist, trying to sever the flesh or grace or whatever it is exactly that makes up Cas. 

It takes a painfully long second, but then something gives. He jerks the blade lengthwise, up and down, all the while pressing in to scrape out the poisonous rot that’s pooling hot and viscous around the hand he’s using to keep Cas still. 

This wing doesn’t go as easy as the first. It’s like Cas’s body is fighting him as he tries to root out the last bits of infection. The blinding grace that shines out almost feels like it’s attempting to eject him, and for a moment he doesn’t think he’ll be able to get everything, that Cas will die slowly and agonizingly with butchered wings, another angel’s grace choking out his own because Dean wasn’t good enough, wasn’t able to get it all out—

And then it’s like he’s tapped into a larger network and his hand is no longer his own, like whatever force gives Cas his powers has taken control of him as well. Something makes him press down even deeper, jerk the sword in a way that he wouldn’t on his own, and then there’s a cracking even louder than before and when he yanks the blade out, it’s like it’s a magnet, the poison dragged out in a thick river at its tip. It takes all of his instincts as a hunter to not drop it.

Unlike the left wing, this one doesn’t go in a burst of light so intense that he’s forced to look away on fear of blindness. He _wants_ to look away from what’s happening, but of course he can’t. He’s always born witness to the consequences of the horrors that have happened at his hand.

The wing shudders. The bones flex, what feathers remain flaring out. For a moment the wing stretches in the air, though Dean is almost certain that it shouldn’t be able to, that he had to have severed whatever connection it has to Cas’s vessel. But it stays upright all the same. And at the base…

There’s still a slurry of blood and rot, like before. But in addition to the silver-blue of Cas’s grace, there’s also something hot and red originating from below and snapping like lightning up the wing, tightening around the bone and muscle in a vein-like fractal. It tangles with Cas’s grace, entwining and crackling around it. It’s almost like they’re fighting, this fiery essence—the stolen grace that hasn’t yet turned to poison?—against the cool of Castiel’s true self. 

But—and this is the part that frightens Dean even more than all the blood and leakage spilling from Cas’s back, even more than the general horror show that is performing an amputation with no anesthesia on his best friend—but what’s capturing his attention most of all is that it looks like the other light is _winning_.

Three things happen all at once: Cas’s grace disappears in an all-consuming crimson flash; the wing cracks into pieces along the fractal fault lines; and Cas _screams_. Loud and raw, it starts as just a wordless cry, pure pain turned to sound, but then it breaks into words:

“Dean! Dean, stop!”

And then silver light washes out the red. Cas bucks up, dislodging Dean from his back and the bed as he twists around in a storm of blood, rot, and ash. Like an amateur, Dean lands hard on his wrist, but the pain barely even registers as he stares up at his friend. 

Cas’s face is pale as a corpse, his eyes red and bloodshot and panicked like he’d looked under Rowena’s attack dog spell, but somehow this terror seems even more visceral—like he’s really, truly afraid of something, not forced into paranoia by some magic. His whole body is shaking as he scrambles to the head of the bed, pressed as close to the wall as he can without actually putting any pressure on his wounds.

“Cas? Cas, look at me.” Dean tries to meet Cas’s eyes as he rolls onto his knees, not wanting to stand or make any sudden movements that could make Cas feel threatened, but Cas’s eyes stay unfocused as he gasps for ragged breaths.

“What have you done,” he breaths out. “What – what have you _done_?”

Dean’s head swims. He’s too hot and too cold all at once, and he can’t form cohesive thoughts above the staccato of his heartbeat. “Cas?”

“You monster—” Cas begins, still not looking at Dean; but before he can finish the thought his head snaps to one side like he’d been slapped. His hands spasm, clenching and unclenching in his lap, and the trembling turns to tremors that wrack him like a seizure.

Dean starts to get to his feet, but then Cas yells, “No!” and he stills immediately, because even though Cas isn’t looking at him, who else could his words be directed to? The room smells like fire and ozone and blood and rotting skin and he thinks he’s going to be sick, but he can’t be; he has to focus everything on Cas right now. Cas, whose eyes are closed. Whose face hasn’t regained any color. Whose veins are twitching under his skin; whose hair is slick and stained with sweat and ash and blood; whose jaw is working like he’s trying to say something but can’t get his mouth open.

For a second something changes. Some sort of ripple runs up Cas’s body, but he clenches his teeth and again growls out, “No!”

And then he’s looking straight at Dean, the black of his pupils stark against the red lines running behind them. He blinks, and a tear falls. “Dean,” he gasps. “I’m sorry.”

And that, more than anything else that has transpired in the past hour, doesn’t make any sense. “What—”

“No. There’s no time.” Another full-body shudder. “You’re in danger, Dean; you have to run; I said yes, I’m _sorry_ —”

He arches off the bed, body twisting from side to side. That red light flares up again, bright enough that Dean shuts his eyes for a split second, and when he opens them, it isn’t Cas on the bed.

He doesn’t look any different, but Dean knows all the same. Should’ve known from the start. He’s holding himself all wrong, stiff in a way that Cas hasn’t been since his first months on earth, like his body doesn’t really fit. And his eyes – they’re no different, still bloodied and wet, but at the same time, there’s something very wrong with them. Whatever is staring back at him, it isn’t Cas. Not anymore.

“Oh,” says Not-Cas. “Oh, that was fun. I didn’t plan on showing myself to you—mm, but you were going to find out soon enough, I suppose.” 

He hops off the bed, standing over Dean, who scurries back on his knees before he’s able to force himself to stand. His back is pressed to the wall of his room, and he doesn’t have any weapons on him. Stupid, stupid, lulled into false security by the bunker and the guns he keeps stored in every single room, including here but they’re too far to reach now. His fingers scrape uselessly at the cement of the wall like they’ll uncover some hidden passage, as Not-Cas leans in so close that Dean can finally make out the blue in his bloodshot eyes.

“He really didn’t think I’d ask you to do it, you know. He thought I was bluffing until I stepped in the door. And then, oh, and _then_.”

That laugh – he’s only ever encountered a laugh like that once before. And his mind is screaming no, that can’t be right, he must be mistaken, but—

But.

He remembers the chaos of the Cage. He hadn’t been paying attention to Cas, not really. And the last words that Cas had managed to get out before he lost control—

 _I said yes_.

“And then,” Not-Cas, Probably-Lucifer continues with a grotesque wiggle of glee, “and then he really thought you wouldn’t do it. Right up to the moment you stabbed him in the back, he really, truly believed that you’d realize it wasn’t him. Cas is really sold on the idea that you’ve got something special, some ‘profound bond,’ did you know that?”

Out of habit Dean turns his head to the side when he vomits. It would’ve grossed Lucifer out at least a little bit had he let the bile out on his shoes, but this is Cas, Cas is still in there, and it’s ingrained in his very being that he can’t do anything to hurt Cas.

Except for the part where he really fucking can, apparently.

“Easy there, tiger. Guess you’ve really lost your stomach for torture.” The smirk on his face, that’s all Lucifer. “Too bad. Word on the street was, you were pretty good at it.”

“Let him go, you bastard,” Dean manages to rasp out. 

There’s absolutely no weight behind the words, and Lucifer just chuckles. He snaps his fingers and suddenly he’s perfectly dressed again. “You wound me, Deano. I’m renting with full permission from the landlord.” He reaches back, rubbing his shoulders. “And I just did him a big favor. Closed up all those ugly cuts that _you_ caused. The body is in tip-top shape again, no thanks to you. The Castiel I can see though…”

He shakes his head. “What you did, that’s gonna leave a mark. Though if it makes you feel any better, it’s not the first scar he’s gotten ‘cause of you.”

He’s going to faint. He can’t breathe, his heart is racing, and he’s going to faint, and his last hope is that the devil is the father of lies. “Was it real? Did I—really—”

“Clip his wings? ‘fraid so. But hey! It’s not like he could even use them anymore, right? No harm done in the long run.”

Castiel’s eyes glow red for a moment, and behind him spreads the shadow of two perfect wings, still full of feathers, arching up proudly towards the ceiling. It’s funny—he always kinda thought Lucifer’s wings would be bat-like, more at home on a gargoyle than an angel, but of course that doesn’t make any sense. Why should Lucifer’s look any different than any other angel’s, than Castiel’s wings should look, if there was any justice in the world?

“I’ve still got a working pair, thank goodness. I could never imagine being so useless.” Lucifer laughs,stepping back. “Anyway, I better go back looking for a way to bring down Auntie Amara. But this was fun, Dean. Love to do it again sometimes.”

One last sardonic smile. Dean can’t look away from his eyes. When the red glow of Lucifer’s grace fades, it takes with it the tears and broken veins, and he could almost convince himself he’s actually looking at Castiel.

“I’d tell you that Castiel says hi, but between you and me, the guy’s crying too hard to say anything.” Lucifer rolls his eyes and the illusion breaks; he has none of Cas’s dry, brusque humor. “Some people just can’t take a little pain, am I right?”

And before Dean can even begin to think of an answer, the wings are flapping and Lucifer and Castiel is gone, leaving Dean alone in his room, still stained with blood and whatever poison Lucifer conjured up under Castiel’s skin.

And, of course, the ash and feathers and bone. The worst of it is on his bed, but the remains of Castiel’s wings are spread across his room in dusty black piles that he’ll never be able to sweep away. Whole feathers lie scattered in every corner. There seem to be so many on the floor, when there were so few on Cas’s wings.

Dean stares at one that landed close to where he stands, still frozen against the wall. It’s long, probably almost the size of his forearm. The quill has snapped off and the left side is partially burnt. The barbs clump together in erratic groupings all up and down the vane, giving it a scraggly and unmaintained look, and most of the down near the base has been torn off.

But it’s Cas’s. And it’s still beautiful.

Dean falls down hard, inability to stand coming on sudden. Then he’s holding the feather like something precious, cradled in the palm of his hand. He tries to smooth it out. Return it to the glory he saw in the shadows of the barn all those years ago. 

It’s too damaged. There’s nothing he can do.

His head swims, and he becomes aware once more that he’s gasping for breath. The feather falls to the floor – better dropped than further broken in his hands, which are now clenched into tight fists, an attempt at pain, anything he can hold on to, anything that can make him feel stable.

He’s lying to himself, of course. There’s nothing that will ever make him okay again.

Dean’s gasps come quicker and quicker. His whole body shakes like Cas’s did when he was trying to fight off Lucifer, and he doesn’t even bother trying to still it. He doesn’t know where his heart is anymore; he can feel it in every part of his body. 

He screams once, twice, three times, maybe more, but he isn’t aware of anything at all until a hand shakes his shoulder, and he forces his eyes open to see Sam above him, a look of abject panic on his face. “Dean? What the hell happened?”

Dean stares at him, then turns to his side and vomits again.

*

Sam tells him that it wasn’t his fault.

He says this as he hauls Dean to his feet, arm around his shoulder, carrying more of Dean’s own weight than Dean himself. He repeats it over Dean’s objections as they stumble down the hall together to the bathroom, where he strips off Dean’s ruined clothes and guides him under a cool shower, scrubbing off the ash and the blood and the rot that Dean hadn’t even noticed he was covered in. He repeats it as Dean thinks about what a horrible brother he is, making Sam take care of him when he hasn’t even had time to process the news that his torturer is walking the earth once again; but the thought is distant, more like it’s something he thinks he should be thinking and feeling, but there’s nothing left for him to feel, and so it can’t really affect him.

Sam says that they’ll take care of this like they always do. “We’ve beaten him before and we’ll do it again. We’ve saved Cas before and we’ll do it again. It’s gonna be okay, Dean, but you’ve got to get some rest. Calm down. Please?”

He shakes his head. He thinks. He doesn’t know what calm feels like anymore.

He’s leaning against the wall and Sam is drying him off, still telling him it’s going to be okay. Then he’s in Sam’s bedroom, pulling on a pair of boxers Sam tossed to him, and then being guided down onto a mattress that’s similar to his own, but still wrong in every way. Then Sam is handing him a bottle of water and a small pill because he had to have been on the floor for hours and he’s dehydrated and exhausted, and once he drinks some water he needs to sleep off the shock, and I know if I leave you alone you’re just gonna get drunk and that’d make you feel even worse tomorrow, Dean.

When the water is half gone and the sleeping pill swallowed, Sam helps him to lie down on the bed. “It’s not memory foam, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll clean your room—”

“No.” Dean grabs his brother’s wrist, calling on energy he thought he’d wasted ages ago on panic and on tears. “Don’t.”

“Let me do this for you,” Sam says, prying off Dean’s fingers one by one, and then pressing his hand between his own. “Don’t make yourself go through that. You’re hurting as it is, and you gotta be in a good headspace if we’re going to be fighting the Devil.”

It’s true and he knows it, knows what it would cost him to reenter the horror movie setting in his bedroom, but it’s his penance. He’s gotta pay.

“Dean — no. You don’t have to pay for anything. Please. And… and even if you did have to, it wouldn’t be by cleaning your room. It’d be through locking Lucifer back up and setting Cas free. Which you can do and we _will_ do, but we’ll be wasting time tomorrow if you’re washing your sheets instead of coming up with a plan.” Sam swallows, like the words are costing him something, but Dean’s listening now. The working part of his brain flags Sam’s words as true. “Quicker it gets done, quicker we can actually be helping Cas.”

Dean nods as best he can with such a heavy head. “Leave the feathers,” he says. “Don’t throw them out, Sam.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Sam squeezes his shoulder and then stands, adjusting the blankets. “Get some rest, Dean. Things’ll be better in the morning.”

He knows they won’t be, but the pill takes over, and he feels himself once more slipping away, this time under Sam’s watchful eye.

*

Things don’t get better for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be part of a longer story, but I never really planned out where I wanted it to go beyond this scene. It's been sitting in my drafts for two years, so I figured it was time to set it free.
> 
> Comments are, as always, much appreciated.


End file.
